Regarding Hypnosis and ADHD

I spend a great deal of my time working with hypnosis and guided imagery to assist people with conditions, including ADHD, which provide serious challenges to living. I participate in several list serves focusing on hypnosis. A reader on one of those lists asked me to provide information about ADHD. A number of people in the profession of hypnosis are attempting to find ways that hypnosis can assist the individual struggling with ADHD. The following is a somewhat rambling reply to his question. It’s a bit long, even for me, but again it was not initially written to be posted on a blog. Some of you may find it interesting nonetheless:

I think it helps to refer to two words, what and why. There are any number of radiological and eeg techniques that have done a pretty good job of the “what”. There are identifiable patterns of ADHD. To complicate matters, everyone has some of the symptoms of ADHD, so it really exists on a continuum from zero to a whole lot. The cut off is somewhat arbitrary but when you spend your days (as I do) dealing with clients with diagnosed ADHD you can become pretty good at telling those who are ADHD from those who are not. Also the symptoms of ADHD can be found in many other conditions. This gets into what is called differential diagnosis: is it a wink or a blink, in other words?

The diagnostic criteria in the DSM are helpful, but there are other diagnostic systems that you can use. However, if you are going to file an insurance claim you better be in the DSM system. I prefer Daniel Amen’s book, Healing ADD. Amen uses the archaic term ADD versus the contemporary term ADHD or AD/HD. Amen presents 6 well-defined types of ADHD.

What I have learned is that the single most important symptom or characteristic of ADHD is impulse control In fact Daniel Goleman’s book, Emotional Intelligence, is, in my opinion, really talking about ADHD. He refers to the inability to control the impulse centers as a characteristic of what he calls emotional intelligence. And he makes a very good argument.

Oops, I just pulled an “ADHD”. Started out talking about Amen and flipped over to Goleman. Back to Amen. Daniel Amen has used advanced radiological techniques to identify 6 distinct patterns of ADHD. And quite often these patterns have very little in common. You might want to get the book. It is in every used book store.

Let me turn for a second to the second word, why. This is where things get really sticky. There is a great deal of research going on in this area and this sheds light on the condition. But if we refer to Amen’s theory it may be that there are a number of pathways to the condition and that in the end they are more of a collection of symptom patterns than a simple, distinct and well-defined disorder.

Now let me complicate the matter a bit and talk about diagnosis. I run into people all the time who are “diagnosed” as having ADHD. However when I begin to ask questions about the diagnosis it gets blurry quickly. Moreover when I call the client’s physician it often just makes matters worse. The way medicine is practiced today there is an “efficiency expert” with a stopwatch timing almost every doctor. Believe me that this information is used in staff meetings and if a doc is not “keeping up” they will be kicked out of the practice in many cases. This does not bode well for the physician who has a demanding mother with a screaming child insisting that the doc write a script for a stimulant med to get the child under control. Now the irony is, in many cases, “diagnosis by prescription” actually works with some of the forms of ADHD. If you got it and the drug works then you probably do have or “are” ADHD. However there are types of ADHD for which a stimulant medication can create severe adverse reactions and the physician seldom does a thorough enough job in the assessment to make a valid distinction. I could go on and on here, but you get my point. Just because someone is “diagnosed” doesn’t really mean they are ADHD. Maybe yes, maybe no.

While the meds can be very useful for some people by no means are they a panacea. The risk of addiction to stimulants is almost zero for a truly ADHD person, unless they happen to have one of the types that do not respond to stimulants. Then it gets dicey. I worked as a therapist with this population for over 20 years. And to be sure these people have many issues that therapy can address. But the core condition of ADHD is really not treatable. There are really two modalities and maybe 3 that seem to be very useful in helping these people. The first is meditation and the second is coaching.

When I came to this realization I dropped a bundle of cash on CoachU and went through a (re)training program to learn to coach my clients, 95% of whom are adults. It is a long-term process but I have seen wonderful results for those who stay the course.

Meditation can be extremely helpful in assisting people with ADHD learn to manage their emotional states. They tend to be highly anxious and to have serious self-esteem issues and the combination of coaching and meditation is very useful.

Hypnosis can be most useful in helping to resolve any of the issues that have occurred as a result of the individual’s lack of self-control. There are often any number of childhood traumas that plague these people and regression can be very useful in getting those out in the open and resolved. But, and I may step on some belief systems here, I do not believe that hypnosis can “cure” a valid case of ADHD. A blown diagnosis, yes. But ADHD is neurological and in the end we just don’t know enough about it to make a difference. The one field (I mentioned 3) that does show some promise is neurofeedback. I have seen NFB be very successful, but again it does not work with everyone. When it does, however, it is like magic.

My advice to any consulting hypnotists is to proceed carefully. You have some very powerful tools to work with, but also be aware that hypnosis has not been shown to be a cure for the majority of cases presenting with legitimate ADHD. I won’t tell you that it has never had that outcome, just that we set the client up for another disappointment. Until we get valid controlled studies we should proceed carefully here. Again, use the power of hypnosis to provide any help that you are capable of.

I write a blog, Houston ADHD Coach, on the Houston Chronicle web site that deals with ADHD. Unfortunately, I’m so extremely busy that I have not given it anywhere near the attention it deserves. Hopefully I’ll be able to pick it up and get more of this information out. I’m involved with a community group attempting to create a management district for a community of 65,000 residents. This has turned out to be far more demanding of my time than I anticipated when we first began.

In addition you can also find a ton of information at www.CHADD.org. The CHADD website has an interesting article for adults with ADHD: “Adults with ADHD: Steps for Beginners”. You might check that out. Also, women with ADHD are a distinct population and the needs of women with ADHD can be confusing for those not aware of the distinctions. The cover article on the CHADD website gets more into these issues.